Surgery May Put Sheen Out Of `Johnny Utah`

November 26, 1987|By Marilyn Beck, Tribune Media Services Inc.

HOLLYWOOD — Charlie Sheen`s representatives confirm that the actor may bow out of starring in Ridley Scott`s ``Johnny Utah.`` He may need surgery to correct shoulder injuries suffered several months ago.

Sheen pulled some muscles working out with the Dodgers before ``Eight Men Out`` shooting in September. He completed the baseball picture but had to take cortisone shots, an aide reported.

The shoulder X-rays reportedly have been sent to ``Johnny Utah``

producers, who have been talking with Sean Penn in case things do not work out with Sheen.

- Plans are back on track for Cybill Shepherd and director Peter Bogdanovich to reteam in ``Texasville,`` the sequel to the 1971 ``The Last Picture Show`` that marked the beginning of her film career and their lengthy romance.

Progress on the project had halted because of the financial problems of Dino De Laurentiis` DEG Studio, which had the film rights to the Larry McMurtry book. Bogdanovich said that he is buying the property from DEG and that he and Shepherd will make the drama as an independent project during her ``Moonlighting`` hiatus of 1989.

``There`s too much to do-a script to complete, for one-to have the project ready to shoot during Cybill`s hiatus this coming spring,``

Bogdanovich said. In the drama Shepherd will return to Texasville as a wounded, second-rate movie actress mourning the death of a son.

Bogdanovich has plenty to keep himself busy. He has finished editing Rob Lowe`s ``Illegitimately Yours`` for January release and is preparing to make the big-screen drama tentatively called ``The Journal of Theodore Hammer`` for producer Ray Stark at Tri-Star.

- ``We had to have our lawyers submit the script to the CIA before we could make the film,`` said Steven Seagal of Warner Bros.` ``Above the Law,`` an action/adventure film about CIA involvement in drug trafficking, which he cowrote and in which he makes his big-screen acting debut.

``Warner`s has bent over backwards for this picture,`` he said. ``It`s very important to me that people know about these things.``

Seagal, a martial-arts master who is married to actress Kelly LeBrock, conducted special security operations and organized security task forces in the Far East during the `60s and `70s.

- Look for Yakov Smirnoff, the Russian standup comedian/actor, to announce a deal for a big-screen comedy.

``The role was written for me,`` said Smirnoff, who said that he is not free to name the project but did say that it is not an adaptation of his new

``America on Six Rubles a Day`` book.

As for his ``What a Country!`` series, which ended its first-run syndication in April, Smirnoff said: ``It`s on hold. I don`t know if we`re going to go back into production.``

Smirnoff recently bowed as a headliner at Las Vegas` Golden Nugget for the first time. He admitted that it is harder to parody the Soviet Union in these days of glasnost.

``Gorbachev is so popular here; he`s more popular than any of the candidates running for president.``